The Pain Refuses To Go Away

Guilt Haunts Firefighters Who Escaped Fatal Blaze

April 16, 1989|By Lauren Ritchie of The Sentinel Staff

Suddenly, the order came: Get out - now.

Orange County firefighter Rick Marcotte and his partners Todd Aldridge and Mark Benge were standing on the first floor of a Lake Buena Vista gift shop peering through a hole in the ceiling at the smoldering attic.

In the blinding smoke and blaze, Marcotte could rely only on his instincts. He headed for the one strip of light he could see - a small window near the ground. He threw himself against it, but he was too big for the space.

He moved a little and hurled himself backward through the bottom of a glass door, his coat in flames. He was free.

At the controls of the fire engine, Dan Bonacci turned up the water pressure on the hoses that were still inside with Benge and Aldridge.

''But I knew. I knew then in my heart. I knew they were gone,'' Bonacci said.

Sobbing, Bonacci kept spraying the water.

The men on B-shift at station 36 knew they faced danger when they took the job. But nobody ever prepared them for what happened Feb. 24, when Orange County lost its first two firefighters. It's all too much. Eight weeks after the fire, the questions won't stop.

Marcotte is single. Why did he get out instead of Aldridge or Benge, both married, both fathers of two children?

He sat at the dinner table at Station 36 recently, his head in his hands. Looking up, he recounted the split-second decisions that would save his life.

''I was in the middle of the building. All I know is I heard a pop and everything came in,'' he said. ''I knew nothing. I just wanted to get out.''

Marcotte pulled out a red kerchief to wipe his eyes.

That's the most he has said to an outsider since the fire at the Sunrise Gift Center near Interstate 4 and State Road 535.

Benge died of a skull fracture in the fire. Aldridge, trapped under the debris of the roof, burned to death.

By some miracle, Marcotte got out.

Now he's paying for it. The nightmares, the doubts, the guilt, the sick feeling when a television station repeatedly airs pictures of the bodies. Those bodies were his friends.

Each of the survivors in the crew has his own tormenting question.

Lt. Chris Garrett, a 15-year veteran of the fire service, normally would have been inside the gift shop that day. Instead, he was filling in for a sick battalion commander in another part of the county. Aldridge took his place.

Bonacci, 39, was operating the engine - where Aldridge should have been. ''It affects me at night. I can't stop thinking about it. Todd would have been snug as a bunny,'' he said.

Chris Grieb, 30, missed by seconds being in the building when it collapsed. Aldridge, believing the fire to be minor, had sent Grieb out to get cloths to prevent water damage to the racks of T-shirts.

For one-third of their time, the six men lived together. It's 24 hours on duty, 48 hours off duty.

They cooked together and slept in the same quarters. They squabbled over what movie to get at the 7-Eleven and looked to each other for advice on family troubles. They planned surprise birthday parties for each other and exchanged Christmas gifts.

Together, they also tended seriously injured people, some of whom died while they were doing their best to keep them alive. Together, as a team, they routinely went into burning buildings.

The crew was cooking beans and sausage - Aldridge's favorite meal - when the alert tones on the radio signaled a fire call.

''We started out on the road and I could see the smoke,'' Bonacci said. ''I said to Todd, 'Looks like we've got something.' I told him, 'You get ready, buddy. I'll take care of the noisemaking.

''Nobody wishes a fire on anybody. But when one happens, we're excited. We're ready to get in there and do our job.''

At the scene, little things started going wrong. Aldridge couldn't hear the radio transmissions from headquarters and Bonacci donned a headset to relay them. The three closest engine companies were tied up so a back-up crew started to the scene from 11 miles away.

Marcotte, Aldridge, Benge and Grieb went inside the building.

''I started getting a bad feeling. There was a lot of smoke coming out of the eaves. I called Orange County asking for a third engine,'' Bonacci said.

''Chris had come out to get the salvage covers Todd wanted and was headed back to the building.''

Then the roof fell.

At the funeral, the four survivors sang and hugged and cried and talked about how much they love each other.

''A lot of guys don't want to feel close or say it,'' Grieb said. ''It's too important not to.''